Kaiser Health News has gathered years of budget documents and other records belonging to Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, and has released them to the public for viewing and perusal. During the early days of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, Purdue spent much time and effort promoting the drug to doctors, significantly downplaying its addictive qualities and suggesting it be prescribed for maladies as mild as back pain.
A Huge Marketing Push
The company spent over $400 million in the years after 2000, when Purdue told Congress they were aware of drug abuse problems and drug-related deaths with OxyContin as the drug in question. The money was spent advertising to doctors and pharmacies, and to also build websites and other methods to get patients as many of their narcotic painkillers as possible.
Combined with the fact that many doctors had been convinced that opioid painkillers like OxyContin weren’t all that addictive, and the fact that opioids, in fact, are very addictive, Purdue Pharma could have just hinted at some kind of marketing campaign to get a huge portion of the population addicted to their drugs.
However, they chose not to hint at marketing for OxyContin. Instead, as noted above, they pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting an incredibly addictive substance that has directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. And, no, that number isn’t an exaggeration – overdoses on opioid painkillers make up more than half of all drug overdose deaths in the country. That literally means more people are dying from opioids like Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin than all other drugs combined.
Reckless Drug Peddling
The extent of Purdue Pharma’s devious marketing between 1996 and 2002 (which is so bad that now it’d be considered illegally “reckless” according to more than 1,000 federal lawsuits) was only discovered recently thanks to some sleuthing by the Kaiser Health News organization as they went over the pharmaceutical company’s budget documentation as well as other documents that explicitly discussed OxyContin and how they were going to throw a ridiculous amount of money at pushing it on doctors and customers regardless of their opiate withdrawal symptoms and opioid side effects – both of which put Purdue Pharma opioid users in mortal danger.
If you’re in that boat but trying to get of the opioids from your life, contact us online or call us at (866) 228-9806 now.